


Again, with Feeling.

by persephoneregina



Category: ONEUS (Band)
Genre: And then they were roommates, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, I promise it will make sense, Idiots in Love, Introspection, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Moving In Together, Raflame PD, Romance, Roommates, Seoho is a photographer, Seoho is also bad at feelings, Smut, Strangers to a quickie to friends to roommates to lovers, bad sex puns, listen I know it's intricate but here we are, no beta read we die like disaster gays, whipped gays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28305621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephoneregina/pseuds/persephoneregina
Summary: ...Everything Youngjo thought he had buried deep enough was resurfacing, at once, and taking over his lucid mind, dragging him down the spiral of an ancient passion, which he had forced to fade, and that was coming back now in all of its might.“Again, with feeling”, as he would have found written on an old music sheet for an opera play, if the scene unfolding in front of their eyes was to be described in musical terms.When their lips closed the distance between them, again, and their gazes met, Youngjo could almost hear it in the back of his mind: a glorious reprise of their early theme, that had been playing in the background from the beginning of their history together, first just merely hinted to, hummed like a lullaby, and now being enriched by a more definite and intricate melody, a steadier tempo, a clearer composition.
Relationships: Kim Youngjo | Ravn/Lee Seoho
Comments: 15
Kudos: 34





	Again, with Feeling.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kumo_is_kumo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumo_is_kumo/gifts).



> Hello my darlings!
> 
> This AU is a present for kumo_is_kumo for the WeMoon 2020 Secret Santa.  
> It was my first time writing a SeoJo, but as soon as I saw this prompt I knew I wanted to give it a try, so I hope that, with this work, I have met your expectations for this story and wish you a very happy Christmas <3  
> I hope you will enjoy this work and that it will make you good company during these holidays!  
> I know that these times have been really trying for all of us, so please stay safe, take care of your health and always remember that you are loved, you are cherished, you are important. Every single one of you matters incredibly much to me and I hold you all close to my heart.  
> Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, my dearests. May it bring you all peace, love and comfort.

_December, 1988._

The nights were cold, in Seoul. 

They had always been cold, ever since he moved, five years before, to pursue his true passion, music, in spite of his parents’ pressures for him to become a lawyer. He started small, just like everyone else, with nothing but a head full of dreams and the little musical knowledge he could have achieved in his high school days, which, to be fair, was clearly not enough. After juggling a couple jobs as a waiter, he eventually managed to be hired, as a handyman, in a small recording studio. It was not much, in all honesty: he had to do a bit of everything, from checking in the bands that booked the rehearsal rooms to cleaning up after they left, from making sure that the cables and microphones and amplifiers all worked to replenishing the mini fridges with beer, water and soft drinks. But still, he got the feeling of being one step closer to his dream.

He was content with learning whatever he could from all the people who hung around: musicians who went there to rehearse, electricians, musical instrument sellers, publicists, talent scouts, group managers, indiscriminately. Youngjo always made sure to exchange a few words with whoever came to the studio and to steal with his eyes in order to learn as much as he could. Nevertheless, his biggest joy, at work, was when the owner of the studio allowed him into the mixing room with him. He was a man in his fifties, polite yet of very few words, frugal in his appearance but extremely knowledgeable in his work, with a cigarette always in his hand and small, lively, beady eyes. Youngjo liked him a lot: in spite of his looks, that suggested, at best, mediocrity, he was a brilliant man, with a sense for talent that had made him invest in the right artists to produce. Thanks to him, a lot of talented young groups had been able to record their first demos and get noticed by majors. And Youngjo wanted to be like him, someday. To develop that sixth sense for talent, that intuition that would have made of him a respectable producer.

Youngjo had big dreams, way bigger than the small town where he had grown up, but, in time, those dreams always seemed to come at the cost of losing strands of his soul in order to be achieved. One of those dreams, though, was definitely not about music.

It was about someone.

Someone called Seoho.

When Youngjo saw Seoho for the first time, it was mid January of 1983. The first thing he thought was how cute he looked: all curled up in a corner of the sofa, in the lobby of the small recording studio where he worked, fidgeting with his Leica and looking like a lost child. It was a calm afternoon at work, he didn’t have much to do, and he thought that making a little conversation with him wouldn’t have harmed.

“What are you doing?” Youngjo asked, back then, but Seoho didn’t answer, way too caught up in his thoughts to acknowledge the presence of anyone else in his living space. “Hello?” Youngjo insisted, waving a hand in front of the boy’s face. 

“Hello!” Seoho screamed, jumping on his feet and dropping his camera, then falling on his knees to pick it up and frantically checking that nothing broke, while angrily imploring to himself a series of “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“I’m sorry… I didn’t want to scare you. Is everything alright?” Youngjo said, hardly containing a smile, as he kneeled down as well, trying to make eye contact with him.

“Scared? No. More like terrified.” Seoho answered “And almost gave me a stroke at the thought of having destroyed my only means of subsistence, but besides that you’re fine.”

“Woah, I guess this wasn’t my best self introduction. Can we, maybe, do it all over again? From the beginning?”

“O...Ok? So what do I do, do I sit back on the sofa and wait for you to come from the corridor and pretend to be surprised?” He asked, scratching the back of his head and staring at him with wide opened eyes, waiting for instructions.

Youngjo looked back at him, interrogatively, mouth agape as he questioned whether he could be seriously meaning that. “I… I don’t think… I mean I guess we could but…”

While he kept on babbling nonsense, trying to collect his thoughts and form a coherent answer, completely taken aback, Seoho started giggling, lips tightly pressed together to hold in the loud laughter that, after a few seconds, inevitably slipped out of his mouth and echoed throughout the whole studio.

“You should see your face!” He said, as he flopped down on the sofa, pointing at Youngjo and cracking up at his confused expression.

“My face is absolute perfection!” Youngjo answered, irritated, straightening his back and lifting up his chin, in an attempt to flaunt his looks.

“And you're humble, too!” Seoho teased, raising one eyebrow, still smiling.

“Humbleness is for the unambitious.”

“Maybe you’re right. Or maybe you’re just vain.”

“Why choose? I can be right _and_ vain, one doesn’t exclude the other. I’m fine with being called vain. There’s way worse flaws.”

“Well,” Seoho said, stretching out his hand to shake Youngjo’s, “Nice to meet you, vain, I’m Lee Seoho.”

“My pleasure. You can also call me Youngjo. So, what do you do, Lee Seoho?” Youngjo asked, sitting down next to him.

“I’m a photographer. I came to take a few pictures of a band for their album, you know, the classic pictures taken in the studio, the ones metal bands like so much, where they’re pretending they don’t know they have a whole photographer taking shots of them while recording. I hope you have a heating system here. They usually like to be all sweaty, in these shootings. Gives the idea of how hard they’re playing or some shit.” Seoho answered, mimicking the usual poses that those musicians seemed to like so much.

“Ah, I know who you’re talking about, the Steel Eels, right? But… I think you got the day wrong, though. Wait, let me check for you…” Youngjo said, going to the lobby desk and flipping the pages of the agenda. “Yep. Sorry, my boy, their recording session is scheduled for tomorrow.”

“What? Tomorrow? Are you sure?” Seoho asked, apprehensively, standing up and following Youngjo at the front desk to see for himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… I’m so dumb… Isn’t today the 14th?”

“Nope. It’s the 13th.”

“Fuck…” Seoho whined, again, holding his head with both hands “I hate it when time doesn’t go the way I want it to…”

“I’m sorry. Can I offer you a beer to cheer you up?” Youngjo asked, setting a hand on Seoho’s shoulder and softly massaging his tensed muscles, under the fuzzy, checkered, woollen shirt he was wearing. 

Seoho raised his eyes to look at him and forced a half smile. Then, he nodded his head.

“Come on,” Youngjo said “Follow me, we can hang in the back.”

The back door of the studio looked out on a narrow alley, where they stacked up the trash, carton boxes from their deliveries and other stuff that needed to be disposed of. They spent there an hour or so, talking and drinking and laughing, before Youngjo had to go inside to check in a group that had booked a rehearsal room. When he went back looking for Seoho, he found him still there, waiting for him with his back resting against the brick wall, a foxy smile on his lips and a faint glow in his eyes.

“Can we go somewhere else?” He asked, as he dragged Youngjo closer by the collar of his black leather jacket.

“I… I have to finish my shift…” Youngjo muttered, in return, blushing at the blunt suggestion. He knew how it would have ended. He knew it. And he was holding his breath for it. But on the other side he also knew he couldn’t just leave work like that. No one would have had a word to say, if he had taken a break while no one was there, but now he had basically left a group in a room unsupervised. If even a drumstick would have disappeared, Youngjo knew he would have had to pay for that. And if he had to improvise any other activity inside the studio, he should have at least warned his boss.

“Do you, now…” Seoho kept on teasing him, while he sneaked with his face so close to Youngjo’s neck that he could feel his warm breath and his plump mouth hovering on his skin. Every second of that felt, to Youngjo, like the sweetest form of torture man could have ever imagined. Gosh, he wanted to give in so bad, and what was worse was that Seoho had understood that he did. That he couldn’t resist him. That he was about to break under his sweet pressure, as he made him helpless and needy and so terribly aroused. “Pity.” He added, before he placed a wet kiss on the crook of his neck and then licked his skin all the way up to his jaw. Youngjo had to close his eyes and to painfully bite his lower lip, while an uncontrollable flare of heat swallowed his whole body, spreading from his groin to his limbs like wildfire. He couldn’t hold it any longer. He had to come up with an escamotage, because he had never wanted to do anything, in his whole life, the way he wanted to put that little cheeky brat back to his place and rail him to tears.

“Well… These guys have booked one of the rooms for two hours.” Youngjo said, as he pushed his body against Seoho’s and wrapped his hands around that small waist of his “But the other ones are free. I could… Decide to do a check up of the electronic equipment in one of the other rooms.”

“You definitely could.” Seoho stressed, letting his hands slide down the curve of Youngjo’s back and then sinking in the toned flesh of his glutes, under the rough fabric of his jeans. 

“I have this jack that doesn’t seem to work well. Could we try and plug it in one of your entries?” Youngjo insisted, leaning down to nibble on Seoho’s earlobe, while holding him so close to his body that he could feel him quiver under himself, flinching at every stroke of his tongue, while a symphony of eager hums slipped from the wet mouth of the smaller one.

“Please, do. I’m sure I’ve got quite the port for that.” Seoho answered, with a playful giggle. Then, Youngjo sank on his lips with his own, kissing and sucking and biting them, making them end up all swollen and pink, as he couldn’t hold in the moans anymore. They needed a room. Better if an insonorized one. And they needed it immediately.

It was the first time Youngjo did anything so reckless, but somehow Seoho made him feel brave and confident enough that everything would have been fine. That he was allowed to do something forbidden, to decide on a whim, to do something unlike him. And Youngjo liked it. He liked it as much as he liked Seoho, which was, to be honest, way more than he would have wanted to admit. He liked it to the point that he was fairly sure he wanted to see him again, and again, and again. 

Which they did.

After that one crazy afternoon, Youngjo and Seoho started to hang out together pretty much every day. Not as in dating, honestly. Even though they clearly liked each other, the idea of becoming an item felt unrealistic: Youngjo was fully focused on his career, back then, just as much as Seoho was. While Seoho was traveling across South Korea for the shootings the agency he worked for booked him for, Youngjo, on the other hand, spent most of his days working and studying at the studio to increase his knowledge and become as proficient as he could in producing music of different genres. Even just looking at their schedules, it was clear that they would have never had the time or energy to be involved in a relationship. Not a serious one, anyway. Moreover, the more time went on, the more they found out how amazingly they worked as friends: when they both were in Seoul, they would catch up after work and go for a walk, or sit in front of a beer, and talk for hours about their day, about their past, about their families, about what they had done or where they had been, losing any sense of time. Youngjo brought cassettes of his demos for Seoho to listen, just like Seoho showed Youngjo the photographic projects he was working on, and they exchanged opinions on their works, encouraging each other and sharing opinions, hints or suggestions to one another,genuinely trying their best to be helpful for their mutual growth.

But most of all, they loved hanging out casually together, even if they had nothing special to do, even staying in silence one next to the other, hanging around in Seoho’s photography studio or at Youngjo’s workplace.

Everything was fine as long as they were together.

Sometimes, Seoho would take pictures of Youngjo, out of the blue, without any preparation or pose, and would then proceed to smile when Youngjo noticed, like a child who got away with stealing cookies right in front of his mother’s nose.

“At least warn me!” Youngjo whined, one afternoon, while he was busy listening to a track he was working on at the recording studio. “I look hideous.”

“You know you don’t. And that’s not the point, anyway. I don’t want you to look beautiful. I want you to look real.” Seoho retaliated, snorting. “Hideous my ass.” He added, hitting Youngjo’s head lightly, with his fist, before putting down the camera and sitting back next to him.

“Your ass is pretty.” The other man said, putting down the headphones on the desk and smiling, while he extracted the cassette with the finished mixtape and stored it inside a plastic case, which he had decorated all over with handmade drawings of red roses and, in the middle, a writing saying RAFLAME.

“Raflame?” Seoho asked, curious, as he swiftly grabbed the cassette and turned it in his hands. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hey! Give it back!” Youngjo protested, trying to take it away from Seoho’s hands, but failing miserably, while Seoho hopped around the small room, laughing and running away from him. “Whatever,” he eventually said, flopping on the chair, defeated, “I just thought it sounded good as my… You know… Stage name or something.”

“Why would you need a stage name?” Seoho asked, his eyes widening as his curiosity was clearly triggered by that statement.

“Well, I saw that there is this big company who is accepting demos from aspiring producers and I thought I could give it a try. But now that it’s done I’m not so sure I want to send it to them, after all. The more I listen to it, the more flaws I find.” All of a sudden, Youngjo’s face darkened and his brows furrowed, in an expression filled with shame and resignation, while his eyes stared blankly at the ground, soulless.

“Then why do you look like you’re about to walk the plank?”

“I don’t know. Probably because that’s how I feel.”

“Well, that’s a big shot in the dark, but the way I see it, your talent is wasted in this shithole.” Seoho firmly spat out, standing in front of him with his hands on his waist. “You are good, Youngjo. You’re very good, and you cannot spend your life in a place that won’t allow you to shine as you deserve.”

“What if they won’t pick me?” He asked, under his breath, letting the thoughts that had been torturing him slip out of his mouth “What if I’m not good enough?”

“Youngjo,” Seoho said, sitting down and holding both Youngjo’s hands, sweetly, in his own “What if they do? What if you are? How will you know if you don’t try?”

Youngjo raised his head and almost broke down in tears, when his eyes met Seoho’s gentle gaze and he felt his warm hands softly clenching their grip a little tighter around his fingers.

“You know what we’re gonna do? We’re getting out of here _now_ and we’ll send the mixtape right away. This way it will be a little less frightening. It’ll be like going on an adventure together. Ok?” Seoho suggested, with his usual bright smile, eyes turned in small crescents and a couple small, soft wrinkles forming around the bridge of his nose.

“An adventure together…” Youngjo gave the idea a moment of thought, before forcing a smile on his tensed face and getting up from the chair. “Yes, I could do that.”

Ever since then, Youngjo and Seoho took that whole concept of being on an adventure together and extended it to every single aspect of their lives.

With his bright character, his creative mind, his lightheartedness, his funny jokes, but also his incomparable capability to listen and understand, Seoho brought in Youngjo’s life a serenity and a happiness he didn’t even know he needed, while Youngjo, with his logical mind, his groundedness, his innate sense of hard work and dedication, made Seoho a much more responsible and accountable individual, mitigating his tendencies to escape the obstacles in life and motivating him to face the hardships he encountered with a prompt solution always at hand. They were their home far from home, the closest thing to an understanding family they had ever had, the most precious of friends they had found in their entire life. Whenever Seoho had to leave for his working trips, Youngjo found himself missing him a lot. Of course, he would brush off the thought of being with him as nonchalantly as he could, but even though his rational self kept repeating him that there could have never been anything more than a friendship, between them, there was still a pang at his heart whenever Seoho would part from him by saying: “I’m sorry, I can’t stay more. I have to leave early tomorrow.”

Those words made Youngjo wish he could have had him there, with him, for the few hours that divided them from his departure time. They made him wish to spend the night contemplating his beauty, in adoring silence, fondling with his gaze the gentle curves of his cheeks, the delicate slope of his nose, his lightly fluttering lashes, his softly puckered, rosy lips. Once again, Youngjo had big dreams that came to the cost of a piece of his soul. 

One November night, Seoho knocked on his door, in tears.

“I had nowhere else to go.” He murmured, through the sighs, as Youngjo opened up and let him inside, confused as to what was going on. “My landlord kicked me out.”

“Here, let me take your coat,” Youngjo said, as he helped him undress and got him a pair of slippers, “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll brew some tea.”, he added, while he led Seoho to the living room and wrapped him up in a warm blanket. Seoho limited himself to following him and laying down on the old sofa sitting under a wide window. Outside, the snow was floating in the air, making its way to the ground in a last, slow dance, but inside Youngjo’s home, ever since Seoho walked in, it felt like time had stopped. He figured, like in a horrendous consciousness awakening, that what he had been wishing for so many times, to have Seoho moving in with him, was actually happening, and yet he felt horrible at the sight of how in pain Seoho was in that moment. It wasn’t supposed to go like that. It didn’t have to happen that way. The more he thought about it, the guiltier he felt, even if he knew it was a completely irrational feeling. For a second, Youngjo felt like a sort of twisted version of King Midas. Little did he know that was doomed to be only the first of the many times where his wishes would have become a quite unpleasant reality.

When he was done preparing tea, without saying a word, he went back to the living room and quietly placed the wooden tray with the teapot and two mugs on the coffee table in front of the sofa. For as much as Youngjo would have wanted to say something, he couldn’t shake off the feeling of being somewhat responsible for Seoho’s misfortune, like his simple and innocent desire could have shaped fate in that unforeseeable direction.

“I’m sorry for storming in… I didn’t even give you a call…” Seoho muttered, while he grabbed a mug with his shaky hands.

“No worries. You’re lucky this is my day off.” Youngjo replied, wrapping an arm around Seoho’s shoulder and gently stroking it, to try to comfort him, for little that he could.

“Well, I guess not everything could have gone wrong, today.” the other one said, in the one that sounded like a sad hum, curling up against Youngjo’s body and resting his head on his chest, right on his heart.

“Hey… Listen…” Youngjo began to speak, softly, while Seoho nuzzled even closer and tugged at his fuzzy sweater with his small fists. “You know that you don’t have to tell me what happened, if you don’t feel like talking about it, right? It makes no difference to me. You can stay here for as long as you like. Don’t feel pressured to leave or to find another accomodation now, you can take all of your time. Today you have already been through such a terrible misadventure, the last thing you need is to feel unwelcome.You can rest, now. If you want me to, I can prepare you a warm bath and make up the bed with clean sheets, so that you can get some rest right away. Or we can order a pizza and have a movie night. Just let me know what I can do to make you feel better, and I’ll do it, ok?”

All curled up on himself, like a kitten, still shaking through the sighs, his face buried in Youngjo’s sweater, Seoho looked so fragile and broken that Youngjo really had to try his best to not burst out into tears, as well. Delicately, he leaned down, wrapped both of his arms around his friend and pulled him closer to his heart, holding him tight enough to make him feel his warmth, while slowly, yet rhythmically, running with his fingertips from Seoho’s nape all the way down his spine. Like an unsung lullaby, those caresses seemed to drag away from Seoho’s body all the stacked up tension and fear he had been under that day, and while Youngjo kept on cuddling him and repeating to him how he was now safe, Seoho eventually stopped crying and fell asleep, right into his arms.

It was the first time Youngjo saw him sleeping.

It was the first time he saw his beautiful face laying on his chest, his mouth puckered, lips opened ever so slightly, his lids completely closed in two beautiful crescents, trimmed by those long lashes, still wet with tears, a faint red blush tinting his cheeks and the tip of his nose.

He must have been exhausted, Youngjo thought, as he hesitantly ran his fingers through Seoho’s hair, perfectly shiny and smooth.

He was perfect. 

He was absolutely perfect, and he was there, into his arms.

Instinctively, like under the effect of some sort of autonomous reflex, Youngjo held him tighter, and, while he did that, a single tear, filled with more pain than he could have ever imagined possible to feel, fell from his eyes.

Now that he had welcomed him even deeper inside his life, how was he ever going to let go, when the time would have come?

After letting out a deep sigh, Youngjo let himself sink into the backrest of the sofa, while still cuddling Seoho. With a bit of luck, he wouldn’t have had to find out any time soon.

* * *

  
  
  


After a couple more months, when Youngjo had almost forgotten about his application as a producer, he received a call from the company he had sent his mixtape to. Their representative, on the phone, told him that they had been keeping an eye on him and on his works, and that when they had received his demo, they had no doubts: they wanted to offer him a job. Not as a handyman. Not as a technician. As a producer. In the blink of an eye, without even having the time to figure how, Youngjo found himself living the life he thought he had always dreamed of, realising way too late that, maybe, it was not like he had imagined it to be. A life where he found himself having little to no creative freedom, since it was the company to ultimately decide which artists he had to follow, which concept he had to follow for the mood and the genre, which lyrics he had to write, only basing himself on “what would make money”.

It was draining. 

Humiliating, at times, and insulting towards his talent and intelligence, but Youngjo clenched his jaw and nodded his head, in compliance. There was not much he could have done, anyway. He knew that fame came at a price and understood that, to do things his way, he had to earn a name for himself first. Only, he hadn’t foreseen how high said price was going to be, but while, during the day, he managed to do just fine lying to himself and repeating, in his mind, that he was doing what he had to do, when he would go back home, exhausted, and was left with the only company of his thoughts, the ghosts of the pieces of himself, of his integrity, of the dreamy boy he used to be, that had been sacrificed on the way to success, would mercilessly come back to haunt him.

He thought it would have been easier. He thought his talent would have been acknowledged right away and that he would have been left with absolute freedom to do what he had learnt to do best. He thought he wouldn’t have had to come down to any sort of artistic compromise. But every day, things became more frustrating, more tiring, more heavy on his heart, and Youngjo couldn’t help but watch as the industry turned him into a very different person from who he knew he was in the beginning, when he had just arrived with a small luggage of the little clothes he owned and a heart filled with drive and ambitions.

Sometimes, when he stopped to think if it was worth it, Youngjo couldn’t really tell anymore. So he tried the best he could to avoid that kind of reflection.

But thoughts are like bills: ignoring them doesn’t prevent them from piling up, and whenever Youngjo felt overwhelmed, he at least knew there was someone, at home, waiting for him, he could have turned to. 

Someone who understood. Someone who listened. Someone called Seoho.

Except, lately, he had, in a way, became a worry, too, though inadvertently.

The nights were cold, in Seoul, but not when he came back to him.

That was why, since Seoho, effectively, became Youngjo’s flatmate, he obviously never had the slightest idea of asking him to leave, to begin with, and even though Seoho tried to find another accomodation, in the end he would never make up his mind, so they both agreed on the fact that sharing the apartment would have been the best solution.

Living together, especially for friends, can sometimes lead to arguments or to discovering that there are some elements about which two individuals can be incompatible, but that was definitely not their case. If possible, the two of them figured out that they got along even better. Of course, it took a little while for them to adjust to the presence of one another, and they also had to establish a small set of rules, namely to keep Seoho away from the kitchen and prevent him from cooking AT ALL COSTS, but, all in all, Youngjo managed to survive Seoho’s _peculiar_ cooking skills just fine.

They had found a perfect balance, living together, so much that, when Youngjo received a substantial pay rise after five years of incredible hard work at his company, he decided to move into a way bigger apartment, one with enough room for Seoho to have his own studio at home, so that he could have worked more comfortably, without paying an additional rent.

When he showed him around and explained that he had chosen that home having him in mind, Seoho couldn’t stop smiling and repeating how he could have never been able to repay his kindness. Little did he know that the glimmer in his eyes and his bright, happy face were everything Youngjo asked to feel completely rewarded. Little did he know Youngjo wasn’t asking for anything more but to always have him close.

“So, d’you like the place? What do you think about the studio?” Youngjo asked, his chest filled with a weird sense of pride and satisfaction, as he saw Seoho hopping around with glee, looking around himself in a daydreaming daze, eyes filled with ideas and dreams and projects and plans.

“I love it!” Seoho screamed, running at full speed and throwing himself in Youngjo’s arms, almost making him trip on his feet against the kitchen counter “I love it so much! Wanna see how much I love it? SOOOOOO MUCH!” he added, and squished Youngjo in his arms, lifting him a few centimeters from the ground, with a groan.

Seoho smiled, his whole face lighting up, then, hesitantly, cupped Youngjo’s face in both of his hands and pulled him closer.

“Thank you.” He whispered, and then, as fast as lightning and as light as a feather, Seoho kissed him, making Youngjo’s heart skip a beat, giggling teasingly while the other man still questioned, within himself, gawping, if it had really happened or if his wishful thinking had played a trick on him. 

“What are you doing…?” Youngjo asked, blankly staring at Seoho, blown away by the wave of emotion that was overtaking him.

“You tell me.” Seoho answered, kissing him again, this time slowlier, taking his time to indulge the kiss, feeling the warmth, tasting Youngjo’s mouth and tracing the perfect shape of his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“Seoho…”

Youngjo tried to protest.

He tried to resist.

He even felt his body stiffening up, at first, in an instinctive response to the unfathomed circumstance.

But then Seoho giggled, and tapped on the tip of Youngjo’s nose, and kissed him once more.

When their lips met again, though, Youngjo was a goner.

It had been so long ever since the last time they had any physical contact, besides their hugs or the times they innocently slept in the same bed because it was way too cold, in the other apartment, that it almost felt like going down a temporal wormhole and living all the emotions from their first, enthralling meeting all over again, except, this time, all those physical sensations were amplified by the fact that, now, it was not on a whim, it was not casual, it was not between strangers.

It was all the same, and yet it was all different at the same time. The heat, the electric shockwaves running through his body, the dire need for more, the feral instinct to touch him and feel him up and to bite him and kiss him and savour him all over: everything Youngjo thought he had buried deep enough was resurfacing, at once, and taking over his lucid mind, dragging him down the spiral of an ancient passion, which he had forced to fade, and that was coming back now in all of its might.

 _Ancora, con sentimento_ , “again, with feeling”, as he would have found written on an old music sheet for an opera play, if the scene unfolding in front of their eyes was to be described in musical terms.

When their lips closed the distance between them, again, and their gazes met, Youngjo could almost hear it in the back of his mind: a glorious reprise of their early theme, that had been playing in the background from the beginning of their history together, first just merely hinted to, hummed like a lullaby, and now being enriched by a more definite and intricate melody, a steadier tempo, a clearer composition.

“I missed this...” Seoho sighed, as soon as Youngjo’s lips reached the crook of his neck and his hands frantically began to unbutton his shirt, desperately trying to get all that unnecessary fabric out of the way of his mouth, now so eager to sprinkle every inch of Seoho’s body with kisses and love marks. “I missed you…”

“I missed you too, beauty…” Youngjo whispered, raising his eyes to contemplate Seoho’s dreamy expression, the way he would still bite his lips, just like he had noticed him doing back then, and charmingly bend his head back with a soft moan and relishing giggles, while Youngjo would make his way to Seoho’s groin and playfully bite the skin from his hips to his inner thighs, after dragging down his jeans with a single hard pull of his hands, which were now rising back to wrap that perfectly round butt in their grip.

Youngjo took a deep breath, raising his gaze to look at Seoho once more, hesitating, doubting himself, his instincts, his desires for one last time. But when he felt Seoho’s hand caressing his cheek, lightly, and when he saw his eyes, filled with the same yearning he knew he had in his own, Youngjo surrendered and decided that rationality, along with the regrets he knew would have pestered his mind afterwards, could have waited.

So, he sank on Seoho’s flesh, on his beautiful body, devouring and worshipping every inch of him with an eagerness and a passion and a feeling he knew he could have never, not even in his wildest dreams, had ever harboured for anyone else.

Every touch, every kiss, every sigh, every stroke, every thrust, was nothing like what had happened between them years and years before. There was a care and a dedication, a sensitivity, a sweetness, in the way the both of them took their time to please one another and to really cherish each single part of it that had nothing to do with the pure instinctuality with which they had consumed each other on their first encounter, and when, at last, the both of them collapsed on the floor, disheveled and breathless, lazily caressing each other’s bodies and pressing their lips together in an endless chain of soft kisses, Youngjo felt his eyes stinging with tears, as he was hit with a fatal realization: they had just made love.

“Seoho, I...” Youngjo began to speak, while him and Seoho were still catching their breath, laying on the floor, but something shut his mouth. Seoho. He was pressing his finger on top of Youngjo’s lips, as he pinned himself on an elbow and looked at him, with a fondness stained with melancholy.

“Youngjo...” Seoho said, his face still turned towards him, cheeks flushed with a bright pink hue and eyes glossy, and kissing the tip of his nose as lightly as a warm, summer breeze, “...let’s not spoil everything with words heavier than we think. I know words are the way with which you fully express yourself, but sometimes perfection can also be silent. And this… _this_ is perfect enough for me.”

Then, he laid down and rested his head on Youngjo’s heart, like he always loved doing, and looked for his hand to interlock their fingers, as to seal that moment, as to hold that note, for an indefinitely long time, like an impertinent countermelody played by a solo violin.

After that, all was silent, if not for the muffled beat of their hearts.

Pause.

Pause.

Pause.

...But what if it was not perfect enough for Youngjo?

What if his concrete nature needed those heavy words, the same ones that Seoho, with his heart made of air and his feather light soul, repelled so much?

What if, in the end, Youngjo and Seoho had eventually found their incompatibility element, their clashing point, their insurmountable difference, the same one they had never incurred in during all those years of living together, just because they had always put that kind of talk to the side?

“A penny for your thoughts.” Seoho’s sweet, dreamy voice reached Youngjo’s ears, while he was still laying on the ground, motionless, breathing heavily. 

Youngjo didn’t answer, turned on his side to look into Seoho’s eyes and saw, in his mind, all the memories of the happy and meaningful moments they had spent together. 

“I can’t do this.” Youngjo whispered, in a single breath, eventually letting out the words that were weighing on his heart. 

“Define _this_.” Seoho answered, raising a hand to fondle Youngjo’s cheek, gently, and getting a little closer to him.

“ _This_. I cannot tell myself that this is ok, that we can hook up without having to define what we are or where our relationship stands, but I find myself overthinking everything, in a raging motion where my mind wildly runs in circles, without ever finding any peace.”

“Youngjo… Darling…” Seoho began to speak, but the words died down in his throat. He bit his lips, pulling away from Youngjo’s hug, and turned his back on him to hide his face from him, while getting dressed back up. “Let’s go back home.” He knew what Youngjo was about to say. He knew it, because he understood him too well, without him even needing to speak, just like he knew that he felt the same. But, nonetheless, there was a crippling fear biting his guts that made Seoho choke on the only words from which, he knew well, he could never have backed down from, ever, once he would have spoken them.

The following hours, spent packing up their belongings in their old apartment, went by, filled with an unsettling, awkward, sorrowful silence, something completely unfamiliar for the both of them.

When Seoho was done, he didn’t have the nerve to get out of his bedroom. In the darkness, he curled up in a corner and cried, as he listened to Youngjo’s slow steps echoing around the house. He wanted to run to him. He wanted to talk. He wanted to sort things out, to have everything going back to normal, and yet he knew he could not ask for something like that. Not after pulling away like a coward. Not after having broken Youngjo’s heart because of his stupid fears. And, while searing tears streamed down his face, Seoho got nauseous as he realized that he had just failed Youngjo once more, not only because he couldn’t get past his fear of commitment, but also because, on top of that, he couldn’t bring himself to go and comfort him, paralyzed on the bed by an overwhelming wave of self loathing and deprecation. 

The following morning, when Youngjo woke up and Seoho was nowhere to be found, he felt his heart sinking to the bottom of his chest and his knees weakening at every step he took around the house. He had left, and had taken everything he had with him.

He left. He left because of him. Or, at least, that was everything Youngjo could think, as he drove, with a few of his boxes, to the new flat, with his soul on his shoulders and the clear feeling of being sleepwalking into a dystopian nightmare, where he had suddenly lost everything he loved.

When he reached for the hallway, in a state of semi consciousness, Youngjo felt so sick that he had to take a moment to support himself on a wall and breathe as deep as he could, or he could have thrown up at every minute.

After a few, endless seconds, he managed to turn the key and open the door. Strange, he thought as he walked in: he could have sworn he had double locked the front door, last evening. Or maybe he was too distraught and had completely forgotten what he had done the night before, go find out what the hell went through his mind.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” A familiar voice greeted him, as soon as he walked in. “Took your sweet time, uh?”

“Seoho?” Youngjo asked, confused, while a second, powerful, wave of nausea took over him and his heart suddenly started to race in his chest, so fast that the sound of it was almost deafening, as soon as he saw Seoho standing with his back resting against the kitchen’s door.

“It is, in fact, me. Were you expecting guests, already?” Seoho says, as if nothing happened, with his usual, cheerful tone, like his presence was the most obvious thing ever.

“No, but… How did you get in?” Youngjo really tried his best to wrap his head around as to what the hell was going on, but there were way too many thoughts crowding his head, too many questions, too many concerns for him to say anything that would have actually made sense. He just stood there, in the middle of the hall, arms dangling along his frame, exhausted after having been awake for just one hour.

“I asked the concierge, he has a passepartout, and, honestly, thank God, because otherwise I would’ve had to wait outside for four hours.” Seoho kept talking, while he got close to Youngjo and grabbed his cold, sweaty hand. “Come, there’s something I want to show you.” He added, softly pulling his arm, inviting him to follow his lead.

“No, Seoho, wait.” Youngjo said, firmy, opposing himself to him for the very first time, with a dead serious expression on his face, determined to not letting Seoho brush everything off and have it his way this time, too. “We really need to talk.”

“I know.” Seoho said, sucking in his cheeks, before he raised his head and looked at him, with a remorseful smile merely hinted on his lips. “That’s why I need you to follow me. Please.”

Youngjo sighed, pressing his lips together, and nodded, but his face really said it all in his place. Even though Seoho tried to keep up his sunny facade, he really had to put in a whole lot of effort to keep all of himself together and not break down in front of his severe, distraught, tired eyes, that were staring his every move with increasing inquisitiveness, as he led him to the living room. 

When Youngjo walked in there, he was even more puzzled than before.

There, on all of the walls, Seoho had hanged all the pictures he had ever taken of him, from the beginning of their friendship to the most recent days, elegantly set in essential, black lacquered frames of different sizes, and developed in a soft, beautiful black and white.

There were pictures of him from his early days at the recording studio, from their first hang outs at the pub right across the road, at the park, at Seoho’s studio, at their old apartment. In those pictures, Seoho had skilfully immortalised a myriad of his expressions and reconstructed a sort of kaleidoscope of all of the emotions and states of mind that showed his truest, most honest, rawest self, in a sort of conceptual exposition that revolved around a single muse, a living masterpiece: him. All of himself, all of his inner world had been patiently collected and treasured, by Seoho, throughout the years, and was now staring back at him from the walls of that room. He was there, in his entirety, in every single shade of his being: joy, concentration, boredom, tiredness, frustration, happiness, peacefulness, excitement, drunkenness, sadness, euphoria, hopefulness, struggle, distress, calmness. 

“You see…” Seoho began to speak, and his voice was cracking, already, even after that couple of words. “Yesterday I told you that I didn’t want to spoil what we were living with any words. I told you that this was perfect enough for me. But I didn’t give you an explanation as to what I meant by _this_. The truth is… You are perfect. You have been perfect from the very first moment I met you, and have kept on being perfect during every single moment we have spent together from that time until now. You have been perfect, you still are, and whenever I look at you, even though I am well aware that, like every other human being, you have flaws, I can never think of something striking enough to actually change my mind, because, in my eyes, even your little creases, even your shadows, even your silly habits and idiosyncrasies and insecurities and obsessions are all part of the most perfect human being I have ever known. When I first met you, I made a promise to myself: that I would have taken a picture of you every time I thought I was in love with you. To keep track of my feelings. To be sure that it was true. But then I realized that not only was it true. It was persistent. It was undying. No matter what you did, no matter what you said, I only kept on loving you more. Sooner than I knew, I was so deeply in love with you that it petrified me, and without me even understanding how, this sort of atavic fear of ruining everything, of losing you, of messing up, soon took over me, and eventually led me to the one outcome that terrified me in the first place. So, Youngjo, here I am, with nothing but a collection of all the moments in which I wish I had the guts to tell you that I loved you, standing in front of you to ask you if, by any chance, I am still on time to do what I should have done long ago.”

There was a long moment of silence, between the two of them, during which Seoho didn’t dare to raise his eyes to seek any hint of an answer on Youngjo’s face. His chest kept on rhythmically inflating and deflating, as he breathed as heavily as if he had just ran a whole marathon and, for some reason, his head felt completely empty after he had finally voiced all the thoughts and the emotions which he had concealed and repressed for so long.

But then, Seoho felt a sudden warmth and the familiar, soothing sound of Youngjo’s heartbeat, that had lulled him in the hardest moments of his life and that had never once failed to put him at peace, filled his ears once more, while his arms wrapped him in a tight hug, from which he never, ever wanted to part.

“You’ve never been on time, anyway.” Youngjo murmured to Seoho’s ear, making him burst out in a loud laughter, which filled up the room with so much joy it almost sounded like a choir of angels.

“Well, today neither were you.” Seoho answered, slightly getting on his tiptoes to kiss Youngjo through his playful giggles.

They kissed again, and again, and again.

 _Ancora, con sentimento_.

Again, with feeling, as they would have found written on an old music sheet for an opera play, if the new beginning of the rest of their lives together was to be described in musical terms.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
